Psychotik Mouse

Those who know me know that I have been under a great deal of stress for quite a long time now. Some of it is work related, a lot of it is personal. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty details of what I'm stressed about because it isn't the point of this post. The point here is that I've been doing some research and discovered a few things I didn't know about stress and what it can do to you if not dealt with.

When I googled "Stress", I found that there is an American Institute of Stress and they have posted a list outlining the variety of effects stress has on our physical and emotional well-being. Some of these effects didn't surprise me (like back pain and heartburn), but others did (like depression and feelings of lonliness or worthlessness). Stress can not only make you more suceptable to illness, but also make it more difficult to recover from illness. In reading over the list I was shocked at how many symptoms listed applied to me almost verbatim.

So what to do about it?

There is a lot of information out there on how to manage, reduce, and/or eliminate stress, but I found three common themes that seemed pervasive across all of the articles I read:

1. Eat Healthy - Eating a healthy diet along with sufficient quantities of the right kinds of food can help reduce the effects of stress.


2. Exercise - You don't have to kill yourself in the gym... just go for a 10 - 20 minute walk every day. You'll reduce your stress and burn calories at the same time.


3. Schedule "you" time - We schedule our days around all of our obligations to our work, friends, and family but all too often we overlook the most important person in our lives... ourselves. It feels selfish, but it isn't. Taking care of yourself gives you a chance to recharge so you can ultimately be a better friend, father, mother, husband, wife... or whatever you happen to be to the other important people in your life. It is a lesson I know I need to learn, and I also know how hard it is is in practice.

So there you have it... all the information I found tied up in a neat little package. I am working on figuring out how to put into practice what I've learned, but thought I'd share anyway. I hope someone finds it helpful. It really isn't rocket science, but if you'd like more information try entering "Stress" or "Stress Management" in Google. You'll get all the same information I got, and if you still want more you can always go talk to a professional.

Labels: PSA

I caught Pixar's latest creation, Up, last night. Overall I have to say it was definitely not what I expected.

The basic story (without giving too much away) is that Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner)has decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of visiting South America. He does so by filling hundreds of baloons and attaching them to his house. He is joined on his journey by Russel, a Wilderness Scout seeking to get his final merit badge for helping the elderly. Along the way they meet Doug the talking dog, and a bird Russel names "Kevin".

What I expected from this movie was pretty much what was advertised. I expected a lot of laughs and a fun adventure along the same vein as previous Pixar films like Toy Story and Cars. What I did not expect was what I got, which was a film that was ultimately not about the journey to South America itself, but instead a treatise on the journey of life. It touches on things like growing old, losing a life partner, and other deep subjects that one wouldn't expect in an animated film.

Overall this film was amazing and I thouroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend seeing it, however I suggest bringing a box of tissues as there are parts that are incredibly touching (I think my wife cried through most of the film, and I admit I found myself tearing up a bit myself once or twice).

I give Up an A+... definitely worth paying full price in the theater and a definite must see movie.

I finally got to see Star Trek on Sunday and while practically everyone I know has already seen it (or so it seems) the movie was well worth the wait.

Fair warning... there are a couple of spoilers here.

OK, so here's the thing. I have been a Star Trek fan for a long time now. When I was a kid I read dozens of novels, faithfully watched Next Generation every week with my family, and even attended a convention wearing a costume my mother made me (only once, and no, I don't have the costume anymore). As I got older I found my interest waned somewhat. I quit reading the novels, and only caught a few episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. My biggest problem was that it started to become rather apparent that they were starting to rehash the same plot lines over and over again. There was the time travel plot, the mind control plot, the someone gets sucked into an alternate reality plot, and the list goes on.

While this so called "reboot" of the franchise has a plot that takes place in an alternate time line, I felt it was well done (more on this later) and my initial fears that this would just be yet another version of the same thing were unfounded.

Without going into too much detail, the plot centers around the destruction of the planet Vulcan by a renegade from the future. I was worried that in the end they would go back in time, save the planet Vulcan from being destroyed, and go home to stop the bad guy in the nick of time. I was pleasantly surprised when that didn't happen.

So what made this movie work? First of all while there was time travel involved, it was accidental. There was none of this "we'll just slingshot around the sun until we travel back in time" crap. I found the accidental time travel to be more believable from a plot perspective than that. Secondly, there were the characters. I was concerned that having new faces to classic characters would ruin the movie for me, however I found that was not the case. I also feel that having the movie set in a sort of "alternate reality" made sense. It gave the actors and writers some leeway to create a Star Trek movie that was fresh and new, unfettered by having to explain away inconsistencies from the mythos as previously constructed. I think that was one of the big reasons the movie worked, otherwise it would have gotten bogged down by what I call the "fan boy minutiae"... for example, you can't kill off Amanda (Spock's mother) because she appeared in episode x in season blah which was obviously after this movie takes place... this way they can eliminate all of that and just focus on creating a good story.

The other thing that made the movie work for me was the obvious nod to the original series the movie is based on. From sound effects to costumes, there was an obvious respect made to preserve the look and feel of the original while creating something that would appeal to modern audiences. The best part about this movie is that you don't have to have grown up with the series to enjoy it. You might not get all of the subtle nods to the classic Star Trek (red uniform anyone?) but you'll enjoy it all the same.

Overall I give this movie an A+... You should definitely go see it in the theater. I doubt it will win any acadamy awards, but it is still a very well done film and well worth the price of admission.

I ran across this tweet on Twitter today and had to post it here because I think it really sums up why people (and myself in particular) like to follow celebrities. It comes from a fellow known as @bilborg and it goes something like this:

"...you might consider @wilw, @stephenfry, and @feliciaday not as celebrities, but friends I just haven't met yet."

I kind of like that perspective, but I think it holds true for anyone you follow on Twitter. I follow the people I follow because they (for whatever reason) have decided to follow me and I found what they had to say interesting enough to follow them in return. Naturally, in the case of the celebrities I follow I sought them out but the same thing holds true... I continue to follow them because they are interesting.

There are only a couple of people I follow that I know in real life, the rest are just interesting people I may or may not ever physically meet. I'm OK with that, it's just plain fun and at the end of the day isn't that all that's important?

Just a quick note that I've changed the address to my blog. It is now located at http://psychomouse.pdxchambers.com. The old address should redirect you there.

Or so I'm told.

I have started a brand new blog. I have decided it is time to get back to my roots, and more specifically to the very thing that catapulted me into this crazy world of Computer Science in the first place.

I speak of web design. I got into computers when I realized one day that I really liked designing web pages, and what's more, I was actually kind of good at it. Well, things have changed over the years from those days of hand coding HTML in Notepad... but I still enjoy that rush one gets when you put everything together, fire up the browser and it all works.

On the first attempt, naturally.

Anyway, my new blog is meant to be a more professional blog than this one. If you want to hear me rant about my day or complain about work then you've come to the right place. If you want to learn more about stylesheets and want to know the difference between XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 2.0, then you might want to check out the new blog. There you will find all sorts of Web Design goodness (ok, not so much right now because I only have two posts there at the moment) in addition to a portfolio of websites I've designed or worked on.

Exciting stuff in the works!

I couldn't resist posting this. Apparently when professional golfer, Jason Dufner teed off at the Quail Hollow Championship his opening shot landed in the lap of an 18 year old spectator. She was further embarrassed when they had to get an official to come and make a ruling on how the situation was to be played out.

I'm not sure that the official golf rule book has anything on this exact situation, but I think the official made the right call... they placed a marker under the girl's chair and gave Dufner a dropped ball (presumably after the girl and chair were moved out of harm's way).

Dufner ultimately got a bogey on the hole (that's one over par, for you non-golfers out there).

I spent most of yesterday fighting with my web server, but after much persistence (and even more swearing) I got it up, running, and hosting my mother in law's preschool website.

It's been a long time since I got down and dirty with Linux and in this case I'm going even further out on a limb by running CentOS which I've never played with... ever.

So here's the geeky specs for those who care...

The server is (as I mentioned) running CentOS on an i686 platform. It has two physical drives totaling 100 Gb (one drive is 80 Gb and the other is 20 Gb). It has about 1 Gb of memory installed. For a normal server I'd probably want 3 or 4 Gb of memory, but this machine is cobbled together from parts I got out of my old computer and some from a machine my buddy gave me (thanks Alex!) and I doubt it will see enough traffic to be a problem. Someday after I've made my millions I'll upgrade it, but for now it will serve its purpose (no pun intended).

I opted not to run X-Windows on it prefering to go with a strict command line interface. I did this for two reasons one being that I figured I wouldn't be physically touching the box very often, and knowing that I didn't want a graphical interface burning up what little memory the server has for something I wasn't likely to be using much if ever anyway. I have mixed feelings about that decision in hindsight. On the one hand, I think the logic is sound, on the other hand... well... Linux command line is really hard if you don't know how to find the information you're looking for. The up side is that Linux (and CentOS in particular) is really well documented online, so if you need to do it chances are someone has a web page telling you how. I found that the "apropos" and "info" commands are by far the most useful parts of Linux, especially for relative newbies like myself.

There's nothing really special about the server beyond that. It's running Apache for the web server which is pretty standard in a Linux environment (Microsoft to my knowledge has never released a version of IIS for Linux... and really, why would anyone pay for IIS when you can get Apache for free?)

Anyway, I'm really proud of what I've managed to accomplish over the weekend. I don't have my personal home page up and running yet, but you can check out my mother-in-law's website at http://www.pdxchambers.com/~ihh it's a work in progress, but is a massive improvement over their original site.

I haven't reviewed any movies in awhile (probably because I haven't really gone to the movies in awhile) so I thought I was due. This time I'm reviewing the movie "Earth" distributed by Disneynature.

Earth is a documentary and is (from what I understand) the feature length version of the Discovery Channel series "Planet Earth".

I have to say I was really disappointed in the film. I think the problem was that as the movie started they showed a trailer for an upcoming Disneynature film about the ocean in which they talked about getting back to Walt Disney's original "True Life Adventures" series. These documentaries were relatively short and were story driven where the plants and animals of the world were the stars. They were not only educational, but entertaining as well. The background music usually accented the on screen drama and helped instill a sense of danger or comedy as the scene warranted.

"Earth" is definitely not a "True Life Adventure". It is narrated by James Earl Jones (in the American version) who does an excellent job in the narration, but there are times in the film where it is obvious that they are trying to inject a little humor and it falls flat which, in my opinion, has more to do with the writing than Jones' delivery. Another area that felt lacking was the story aspect of the film. The movie's trailer states that they are following three families of animals as they progress through an entire year. While the film takes us through an entire year, it doesn't follow three specific groups of animals the entire time. It does focus on a group of polar bears, whales, and elephants but also injects a lot of information about other species throughout the film which leaves it feeling disjointed and uninteresting.

That said, if you take the film as a strict documentary without the association with Disney one can definitely argue that it is well done for a documentary style film. The cinematography was excellent and many of the scenes would have definitely lost something by not seeing them on the big screen. One case in point is a scene featuring birds flying up off the African plains. There were so many birds that the screen looked like it was simply filled with static. Other scenes in the Himalayas were no less breathtaking but I don't think that was enough to make it worth the price of admission.

Overall I have to say that "Earth" is a disappointment. There wasn't enough about it to make it stand out from the thousands of other nature documentaries that have already been done. It lacks the entertainment value that made the "True Life Adventure" series both fun and exciting to watch. My advice is to see it only if you really want the full effect of the cinematography on the big screen, but if you're just interested in seeing the documentary wait and see it on DVD.

Overall grade - C: Excellent cinematography, but nothing special otherwise.

Ran across this video posted on YouTube... probably every Star Wars geek's wet dream.

Video is marginally NSFW (women in their underwear)... but it's really funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVV9q4rESPg

"These are not the women you're looking for."

Haha... classic!

So I tried to post this link from Slashdot on my Twitter feed several times, but for some reason it got cut off... so here it is again.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/24/1456255

I highly doubt my feelings toward RIAA are all that surprising considering how often I've ranted here about their sneaky, underhanded, and (dare I say) unethical tactics for combating music piracy. So when I read about a court finally stepping up and essentially saying "whoa... wait a second here... let's look at this a little closer." I can't help but feel a little giddy inside.

I always believed the tactics used by RIAA in bringing about these lawsuits have been questionable at best, but it wasn't until I read this article that I started to see just how underhanded they were. I ran across this "Motion to Quash Subpoena" filed by the University of Oregon. If I read it correctly, what happened is that RIAA sent the UO a list of the IP addresses it claims belongs to students (or faculty, or staff.. they don't really know) who have been downloading illegal music and are trying to force the UO to provide them with names, addresses, phone numbers, and whatever other information they can get regarding those students.

I think the UO's response is appropriate (although it seems a bit more like they're trying to avoid a lawsuit themselves... but I'll get to that in a minute.) If you read the deposition from the Director of Network Services, Dale Smith (page nine), you get some really insightful points.

1) Many students share rooms with a roommate. An IP address alone doesn't prove who was on the computer at the time of the alleged infraction, nor does it prove that the person downloading the music was either of the rooms registered occupants... it could just as easily have been someone simply visiting that room. The same holds true for rooms with a single occupant. Having attended the UO I can attest to the fact that dorm rooms tend to be a hub of social activity. So there is simply no way of knowing who is actually on a computer at any given time.

2) Even in cases where a login is available that is unique to an individual there is no way of knowing if that individual was the one actually on the computer at the time, or if they had loaned their login or their computer to someone else. Here I'm referring to the wireless network that Mr. Smith speaks of in his deposition. It seems reasonable to me that a student might set up their laptop to automatically log into the wireless network, then allow a friend to borrow the laptop so that friend can work on a project or something.

3) The university has a legal obligation to protect their students' privacy. Randolph Geller (Deputy General Council and Special Assistant Attorney General) states that the university has a legal obligation under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Rights Act of 1974 to protect its students' personal information. A failure to do so would open the university up for "...legal sanctions, including suits for damages by aggrieved individuals and the withholding of federal funds essential for the university's operation..." (Page 6, Paragraph 5). In other words, the university needs to cover its proverbial ass to make sure that it can't be sued later for giving the requested information out to RIAA's lawyers.

To be honest, I personally feel that it is the risk of a lawsuit (or 16) that is the primary motivation for the UO filing this motion. Call me cynical, but I have a feeling that this is more a financial and legal matter than some sort of altruistic attempt to protect students interests (I would happily admit to being wrong on this). Regardless of the motivation, I find it refreshing to see that people are finally starting to fight back although I have a feeling it is going to open some interesting legal questions. For example, if an IP address can be traced to a particular computer is the owner liable for any illegal activity performed even if they had no knowledge of it taking place?

I think its going to be interesting to see how this all pans out. I would like to point out that I really have nothing against RIAA's arguments in principle. As I have stated before, I do believe that artists should be compensated for their work and that if the copyright laws aren't enforced then why have them in the first place? What I take issue with is the seemingly underhanded manner in which RIAA (and to a significantly lesser degree the MPAA) has opted to fight what shouldn't really be much of a problem. It's one thing to go after the professionals who are actually raking in millions of dollars in illegal music and quite another to go after some poor college student because they dared to download a single song for no reason than they liked it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe a better tactic would be to pick your battles instead of this wholesale war on everyone. I bet the public image of RIAA would improve dramatically if they did.

Just my two cents.

Ran across the latest Penny-Arcade comic yesterday. It defies words as to how... well... wrong it is and yet I nearly passed out from laughing so hard.

What does that say about me I wonder?

See it for yourself.